Judith Merkle Riley Quotes

#1. If I had the pen of Moliere, I could make him comic. That is the role of art, is it not? To make monsters comic, so we can bear them, and our own cheap griefs into grand tragedy, so that others will weep with us.

Judith Merkle Riley

#2. Oaths, in my opinion, infernal or not, ought to be short.

Judith Merkle Riley

#3. Poverty is the curse of ancient but numerous lineages.

Judith Merkle Riley

#4. That is God's way. He upsets everything and loves to annoy the vain most of all.

Judith Merkle Riley

#5. It is impossible to deny a woman in a feeding mood. It is as if they look right through you, to that small, weak part that has been there since you were a baby and that doesn't know how to defy authority.

Judith Merkle Riley

#6. Are you aware of the penalties reserved for freethinkers? I could send you to the block. Good.

Judith Merkle Riley

#7. No the cat we had to leave. It was not Protestant. But the dog, seeing no future for the Reformed Religion in France, was happy enough to go.

Judith Merkle Riley

#8. How funny we are, I thought, the way we dance about each other, each afraid of being hurt by the other.

Judith Merkle Riley

#9. Two halves of the same mind, working at full speed, in perfect coordination.

Judith Merkle Riley

#10. Oh, good Lord Jesus, I prayed, preserve me from this joking of God. Grief and trouble were all bad enough. But joking? It seemed altogether unfair, to me.

Judith Merkle Riley

#11. A cat improves the garden wall in sunshine, and the hearth in foul weather.

Judith Merkle Riley

#12. I could feel something cold stalking my heart. It was fear. They all begin this way, I thought, with pledges of love.

Judith Merkle Riley

#13. Susanna, what you need is a man to look after you
a proper one, not a drunk or a philanderer
or sure as fate, you'll not be safe on this earth."
"Oh, nonsense, Nan. I had a man, and he didn't look after me at all, and now I'm just beginning to enjoy myself.

Judith Merkle Riley

#14. When faced with the illogical, one must expand the sphere of logic to include rules of logic for that which is not logic. This is the only possibility in a world that works according to the rules of rationality.

Judith Merkle Riley

#15. I was content to dwell on the new idea that had come to me that all things and states were just varieties of light, and that in every form, light was the emanation and manifestation of God.

Judith Merkle Riley

#16. After all, he meant well. Foreigners never seem to understand how little attraction an island of damp fogs, cut off from civilization, and a provincial little court has for us Parisians, who inhabit the most cultivated, powerful monarchy in the world.

Judith Merkle Riley

#17. Why the Romans, Father?" I asked him one afternoon.
"Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead," he answered.

Judith Merkle Riley

#18. There is nothing wrong with being a woman, and doing ordinary things. Sometimes small deeds can show big ideas.

Judith Merkle Riley

#19. If I'm kept here much longer, I think I'll have to have another tantrum. They're certainly more satisfying than I ever suspected. I can see why a person would get in the habit of it.

Judith Merkle Riley

#20. I mistrust mountebanks - especially of the female variety.

Judith Merkle Riley